College Seniors Don't Know the ABCs of IRAs

When Jeff Rose spoke with soon-to-be college graduates at his alma mater, out of the crowd of 50, not one hand was raised when they were queried about whether they had ever heard of a Roth IRA.

That not one person out of 50 understood how Roth IRA worked would have been a staggering enough statistic, but not one person had ever even heard of one. Especially after the economic crisis, but in some places well before, there was sense of worry that young people were graduating college without the proper knowledge needed to build and manage healthy finances for themselves. Many colleges and even high schools throughout the U.S. have instituted mandatory financial literacy courses to combat these problems, which run the gamut from learning how to write a check to the rudiments of retirement planning.

Rose, a certified financial planner and CEO of Alliance Wealth Management turned to social media to voice his frustration: “What’s wrong with this picture? I polled 50 soon-to-be graduating college seniors if they knew what a Roth IRA was. The result: Zero,” he tweeted.

A week later, at GoodFinancialCents.com, Rose laid out a proposal: On March 27, hundreds of bloggers and financial professionals would communicate about why the Roth IRA matters, why it’s a good investment and why everyone should learn about it.

WholesaleInsurance.net, a financial services marketplace that offers annuities, life insurance and myriad other products joined the movement and began blogging and sharing Roth IRA-themed social content.

“There’s an enormous gap between the ‘savers’ and ‘spenders’ of our generation, by empowering young people to be informed and start saving early, this movement will give them the building blocks they’ll need to advance the American Dream,” Rose said.